When President Bush showed up at a Baltimore-Washington International Airport hotel Wednesday night for a fundraiser for the Maryland GOP he found that the party’s top-of-the-ticket candidate already had boarded a plane and left town, Cox News blog reported Wednesday. Excerpts -- full story here.

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Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, the party’s U.S. Senate candidate, joined the list of Republicans who had to be somewhere else when Bush came to town to raise money for the GOP.

Steele, instead, was at a fundraising event in Las Vegas.

Nothing personal, Steele spokesman Doug Heye told the local Balitmore Sun. The candidate had a “long-standing previous commitment” to attend the Vegas event at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.